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A Brain Pacemaker for Depression
Ranger writes "Scientists claim to have developed a
pacemaker 'cure' for depression. It may also have applications to controlling tremor's in Parkison' sufferers. This sounds vaguely like Ren & Stimpy's Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy helmet from
Stimpy's Invention."
As usual, Niven did manage to turn this concept into interesting stories. Though (as usual) he also rather beat the idea to death. But the sad thing is that the whole concept is probably either an urban legend or a distortion of real research. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "pleasure center". It is true that things directly induce pleasure in the brain also tend to override basic drives, such as hunger -- something every crack addict demonstrates.
There actually is such a thing. It's located in the limbic system, and is primarily affected by the release of dopamine (which is why drugs that stimulate the release of dopamine are so pleasurable). The rat story isn't apocryphal, although I'd feel better if I had a link to a journal it was published in.
Moving a person with such a condition onto another planet where everything's perfect might help them feel better. Or not. People with a built-in capacity for depression can get depressed -- even suicidal -- over things that most people wouldn't even notice.
Thing is, the word "depression" doesn't really explain anything. It's just a handy label for a wide variety of conditions, some fairly well understood, others hardly understood at all. So it ends up being a dumping bin for any condition with mostly psychological symptoms that a doctor can't explain through physical disease. So really depression is "diagnosed" only by elimination -- and it often happens that the doctor has not eliminated all other possibilities.
To be fair though, SSRIs have some of the mildest side effects of any psychotropic medications. I was on a tiny dose of a mild antipsychotic for three weeks; the end result was that I temporarily became sociopathically antisocial, I gained fifty pounds (and I wasn't exactly Tommy Tune to start with), and my liver had started failing. I'm STILL taking the weight off. Apparently people often die of heart disease after just a few years on an antipsychotic. Lame, huh?
My grandfather just had this done as a treatment for Parkinsons. He can no longer write nor drink out of a cup without a straw because of the trembling.
He had to have three surgeries total. Two were to implant the brain stimulators. One week they drilled the left side, the next week they drilled the right side. The third week they implanted the "pace maker / battery pack" into his back.
He has not yet had the device activated. The doctors make him wait about a month for the injuries from the surgeries to heal. They do test the implants immediately after the drilling and implants. In case you did not notice from the article it is a "Local' anethesia, which for those of you out there not paying attention, means they drill into your head while you are awake.
That part sucks big time, but it is needed because they count on feed-back from the patient to make sure the electrodes are placed properly within the brain.
Anyway, he has not yet had the device turned on for every day use. His healing period was delayed when he got pnuemonia. He is getting anxious to have the device activated. He said the other people who have had this procedure have greatly improved, almost immediately.
How it works for depression I don't know, but it is already being used for Parkinsons.
-MS2k
IANAR(researcher), but for journal references how about:
From M.A. Bozarth (1994). Pleasure systems in the brain. In D.M. Warburton (ed.), Pleasure: The politics and the reality (pp. 5-14 + refs). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Based on research from the origanal study:
Olds, J. and Milner, P.: Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol. 47: 419-427, 1954 [Medline pre1966 - no text online availble].Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
This is needed because (from experience) once you get down into the depths of depression, you can shoot down pretty much any idea. ("Why bother trying to improve myself? We'll all be standing in soup-kitchen lines together in a couple of years..." "Why bother trying to fight the concentration of wealth / corporate power? They can just buy as many congressmen as they want...") In fact, that's what took me so long to start getting help - on good days it didn't seem like I needed it, and on bad days I found no reason to bother.
BTW, antidepressants don't make you artificially happy (if they did, they'd be abused, but there's no street market for them, despite easy availability).
Andrew Solomon, a respected author about depression, wrote a handful of tips in a book called "The Bush Survival Guide" (it has many short chapters, by different authors, with usually-positive tips on how to deal with the current government). One was "Recent research has shown that depressives tend to have a more accurate worldview than non-depressives. However, the same research shows that a more accurate worldview is not an advantage." That's research I'd love to read.
Ok, nice rant. Not terribly informative or informed, but definitly a rant.
First off, why the assumption that people who are suffering from depression don't think. That they are hiding from the big scary reality under their beds.
I can only speak for myself here, unlike some of you who have the uncanny ability to know what others are thinking, but I do think. I think there for I am... I think you think so I'll give you the benifit of the doubt on the question of existence.
In fact there are times that I seem to think too much. Again I can't speak to what others are thinking, but when I can analize my reasons for doing things and others just shrug when asked why they did something stupid, mean or self-defeating I figure I am thinking as much or more than my generally happy friends and aquaintances.
As for the bit about everyone wanting a pill to fix things, you make it sound like anti-depressants are happy pills. When is the last time some dealer offered you an SSRI on the street? They don't make you happy. They make me fart, but thats not a marketable side-effect
Depression is not 'getting depressed'. I wish I could say I get depressed because that would imply that sometime in my life that I can remember I wasn't depressed. Everyone has shitty days, or weeks. Feeling crappy about crappy things is not depression. It can lead to depression but for most thats a temporary condition. Mom died? Find you're unhappy, moody, lost your appetite and don't want to get out of bed? Yes, you're probably depressed. Yes it will probably go away without medication. Therapy may help, but then again so will time.
However when pleasurable experiences give you no pleasure, when even a minor setback can send you into a mood which is negative completly out of proportion, or a major one can have no effect, when you lack the physical energy and the mental capacity to even seek out pleasure, forget happiness, it is not going to be helped by reading a little Nietzsche (though I must have missed reading his real cheery works.)
The happy pills you speak of don't make me happy. They don't even make me normal, though apparently they do for some people. They do however allow me to function enough to keep a job, go shopping, take care of my kids. This is something that for several years I was incapable of doing.
Anyway, as for your great advice, I did all that. In my teens. Didn't work. 20 years later I'm still depressed. But thanks for playing.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible -W.B.